Tom Holland is attached to take the lead role in ‘Beneath a Scarlet Sky’.
The 21-year-old actor will reunite with his ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ producer Amy Pascal on the project, after her company Pascal Pictures obtained the rights to adapt Mark Sullivan’s novel of the same name for the big screen.
The book tells the story of a real life WWII hero, Pino Lella, who lives a normal life in Italy but when the war starts, he joins an underground network helping hundreds of Jews escape to safety across the alps. He is forced to enlist with the German Army on his 18th birthday but is recruited as a spy when he lands a job as personal driver to one of Hitler’s top generals and the information he provides to Allied Intelligence is significant enough to affect the course of the battle.
Sullivan, an investigative journalist, heavily researched Lella’s story, but it was published as a novel rather than a biography because so many records had been destroyed. The war hero recently celebrated his 91st birthday and he lives in Milan, Italy.
Pascal and Rachel O’Connor will produce and Averie Huffine is at the project’s helm.
Tom has a busy period ahead of him as he will reprise his Spider-Man role in a sequel and is also attached to star in ‘Uncharted’, which is based on the videogame and is directed by Shawn Levy.
Meanwhile Pascal is working on ‘The Papers’ – the film adaptation of Liz Hannah’s novel ‘The Post’ which is based on the expose of the Pentagon Papers – with Steven Spielberg directing Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep.
She is producing alongside Kristie Macosko Krieger and Spielberg.
Tom Holland to play lead in Beneath a Scarlet Sky
